AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER VESHNYAKOV, CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL ELECTORAL
COMMISSION, ON HOW THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS WILL DIFFER FROM PREVIOUS ONES. HE
ALSO DISCUSSES THE EXTENT TO WHICH RUSSIA'S PRESENT ELECTORAL SYSTEM COMPLIES
WITH GLOBAL DEMOCRATIC STANDARDS.

Question: To what extent do you think the electoral system in Russia complies
with the criteria of modern democracy?

Alexander Veshnyakov: In my viewpoint, it has been developing rapidly.
According to assessments of competent foreign and domestic experts, the
principal standards of Russia's electoral legislation are fully complying with
the requirements of the existing international standards. Since December 2000
until now, the entire legal basis regulating elections in the Russian
Federation, both on the federal and the regional scale, has been comprehensively
updated. There was elaborated and came into effect six months ago a new version
of the law on basic suffrage guarantees for citizens. A new order of forming
electoral commissions was set. They've become more independent from local
authorities. On the other hand, the new law will allow avoiding heated passions
surrounding decisions of electoral commissions on canceling registration for
candidates. Nowadays, only the court may pass similar verdicts. By the way, the
courts are acting within the strict framework. They have no right to pass
decisions later than five days before the voting.

In a word, the main goal of the reforms is to eliminate negative phenomena
which we had registered during the previous elections. Radical enforcement of
the role and responsibility of political parties during the elections is main
mechanism.

Question: Could this be why the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) is
proposing to make the party lists of Duma nominees "more transparent and
open for the electorate?" What else, besides the biography should a voter
know about a candidate? In Lithuanian, for instance, informing of a candidate's
former cooperation with special services "of other states" is
mandatory...

Alexander Veshnyakov: Each candidate, claiming to enter the power circles, in
the party lists as well, must submit information about his incomes, property
owned, banking accounts, convictions if any, nationality of any other state. All
this is checked and made public. Nowadays, innauthenticity of information the
candidates are submitting is not a plea for canceling the registration, but it
is our intention to have similar facts published by the media agencies.

The 1999 elections proved how effective such publicity can be. In the end,
the federal lists didn't include a single candidate with a criminal record. The
point is that in our files on a candidate, everything is called by its real
name. For those who have previous convictions, not only the article of the
Criminal Code under which they were convicted is mentioned, but also the title
of the article.

Question: Are Russian voters inactive in the elections because democracy has
already been formed?

Alexander Veshnyakov: In a democracy, no one is lined up to vote. As
worldwide practice shows, the countries having voter turnout of over 90% in
elections have no freedom of choice. Most likely, these countries have either
authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. There's another extreme - a symptom of
democracy for third-world countries; this is when the electorate does not trust
the government in general, and the elections in particular. Russia is going
neither to the former nor the latter extreme. For instance, in the US, which we
often use as a basis for comparison, voter turnout in federal elections is much
lower than in Russia. In the US, voter turnout is about 50%, while in Russia it
is over 60%. However, these figures certainly don't mean that Russia is facing
no problems with voter turnout. Thus, in the recent gubernatorial elections in
some regions the turnout has been around 35%.

Question: You've lately expressed an unordinary idea: to hold gubernatorial
elections in Russia simultaneously. What is the attraction of the "bulk
model" of the gubernatorial elections?

Alexander Veshnyakov: Nobody is proposing electing governors on the same very
day. The matter concerns an opportunity of combining the timeframe for the
federal and regional elections. As it happens now, in some regions the elections
are held each 3-4 months within a year: first for local legislative bodies,
followed by the federal Duma elections, the presidential elections and the
gubernatorial elections.

The endless chain of the voting sessions finally brings disorganization of
the electoral process, huge political and financial losses.

In compliance with our initiative, which has been fixed in the legislation by
now, any elections of executive heads this coming year can be combined with the
federal Duma elections. This is possible now, it only requires passing the
corresponding law by a federal subject. I'm certain that a good half of the
regions will avail themselves with this right. In my opinion, advisability of
this step, both political and economic is evident.

Question: What are we to expect from the upcoming Duma elections?

Alexander Veshnyakov: We now have new laws and therefore the 2003
parliamentary elections will seriously differ from the previous elections. This
time, the stakes are high. Except the parliamentary tribune, a party which
passes into the Duma in the December elections will obtain a right for having
its activities financed by the state to the amount proportional to the aggregate
vote won. Plus, a political party represented at the Duma will be able to
nominate its own candidates on any level of the elections, no collection of
signatures or a bail required.

Moreover, we shouldn't discard the project under discussion, which envisages
an opportunity for forming the Russian government by the parliamentary majority.

Therefore, I conclude that the parties which prove their consistency at the
upcoming elections will determine Russia's policy within the next few years or,
possibly, the decades. At the same time, the forces, which fail to make for the
Duma, will go bankrupt, both politically and financially. They'll have to repay
the debt for free broadcast, which costs millions of rubles to the state.

Question: How do you assess availability of a standard enabling suspending
the broadcasting and cancellation of a licence for a media agency in the new
bill for covering the elections in the media? Could this be a legislative tool
to push the "fourth power?"

Alexander Veshnyakov: There's an opinion that the responsibility mechanisms
adoption of which is proposed now don't allow the media agencies speaking
anything at all about the candidates. I affirm this is not true. The basic rules
of activities of media agencies before the elections which are now included in
the law on the elections are not new. All of them had been used in the previous
elections. The laws have merely been defined more precisely. The notions of
information activity and propaganda activities have been determined. The law has
it straightaway that the information activity is done freely, based on the
principles of impartiality, authenticity and equality of candidates.

Question: What do you mean under equality? Will we, those who are working
with the Trud newspaper, have to give 15 lines to each candidate or violate the
law?

Alexander Veshnyakov: No, it's not compulsory. Nobody have an intention to
count the lines. This standard is aimed to avoid any faults. Presidential
elections in Russia are a bright example of that narrowness. Two candidates, in
favor of whom millions of Russian citizens had repeatedly voted, come to a
single city and meet with their electorate.

It turns out, however, that one candidate is discussed in all news programs
day and night through, while the other candidate as if doesn't exist at all.
Where is the equality of conditions, equality in covering the election
campaigns?

We face the barefaced, specially organized propaganda in favor of one of the
candidates.

In case similar faults in the press coverage of the election campaign take
place, there will be every legal ground to take that to court, which will entail
administrative penalties for the media agency which commits such violations. And
if the court confirms the accusation, it will be necessary to pay a fine and
make conclusions for the future, in order to avoid reiteration of similar faults
afterwards. In their turn, the journalists always retain a right to appeal
against an unfair, in their opinion, court decision in a court of higher
instance.

Question: What is the cost of the elections?

Alexander Veshnyakov: The 2003 budget provides 3.5 billion rubles for the
Duma elections. This money will be spent to organize the entire electoral
process, ensure the work of the electoral commissions nationwide, and prepare
information materials and installation the corresponding equipment.

Question: And campaign advertising as well?

Alexander Veshnyakov: No. It is paid as the expense of donations of those who
support an individual candidate, an individual political party. In the 1999
elections, a party could spend 40 million rubles to finance its election
campaign, whereas now the limit has been raised until 250 million rubles. In
1999, a candidate in a single-mandate district was allowed to spend 1 million
rubles to self-advertising, while at the upcoming elections this amount will be
6 million rubles. The state is only indirectly involved in supporting the
political parties and candidates: it gives free broadcasting time, sites at the
state-owned printing mass media on equal terms.

The presidential elections may have a higher price. The 2003 budget envisages
4.9 billion rubles for them. The thing is that unlike the parliamentary
elections, the presidential elections may have two rounds, which accounts for a
bigger price subject to a possible repeated voting, which may not, however, be
required. We'll get the answer on March 14, 2004.

Question: Believing the majority of political consultants, the presidential
elections will enable saving some money. They predict Vladimir Putin's victory
yet in the first round. In this connection, the corridors of power are full of
rumors that constitutional mechanisms for reelecting president for the third
term in office may appear. What is your attitude toward this idea?

Alexander Veshnyakov: I see no urgent necessity for changing the Constitution
on any of the issues, the one you've mentioned included. The president has four
years of authority. He has worked three of them so that, as the sociologists are
saying now, his popularity rating hasn't declined a jot. Why should a successful
president invent any amendments for the Constitution if he has every chance to
use a standard democratic principle - nominate his candidacy for the second term
in office? The Russian Constitution envisages an opportunity of electing for two
consecutive terms in office at most. This restriction is quite easily
explainable for the democratic countries.

Question: Two consecutive terms in office at most. However, it means an
opportunity of running for presidency after another term in office passes?